A Particularly Stellar Lineup of Musicians Shares the Johnny Mercer Songbook at Jazz at Lincoln Center

Songbook Sundays: Johnny MercerDizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln CenterSeries Focuses on Duke Ellington, August 18At Dizzy’s Club, the host and curator, Deborah Grace Winer, observed that Johnny Mercer had a “truly American voice” as a songwriter, being at once “a folk poet” and also “a real urbane, snazzy wordsmith.” It’s true: Unlike most of the giants who gave us the great American songbook, Mercer grew up a thousand miles from Tin Pan Alley and was neither Jewish nor Black, and he was not part of the immigrant experience. Mercer’s music is unique in that we can’t imagine Sammy Cahn or Frank Loesser writing a song about “Moon Country” or describing someone as a “Lazy Bones,” and yet, when it comes to sheer emotional profundity, Mercer ranks alongside Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart.Ms. Winer has been producing songbook-driven shows all over New York and the world for a few decades now, and this is the 13th installment in her ongoing series, over the last two years, for Jazz at Lincoln Center. The lineup for her Mercer songbook show was particularly stellar, featuring an upbeat, extroverted jazz singer, Gabrielle Stravelli; an even more extroverted, Broadway-centric singer, Klea Blackhurst; and an astutely swinging singer-pianist whose keyboard chops are powerful enough to accommodate both impulses, Billy Stritch.Ms. Blackhurst and Mr. Stritch started the party with Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s Oscar-winning “In The Cool, Cool, Cool Evening” — reprised from their highly recommended Hoagy songbook album. Then, Ms. Stravelli delivered the expected uptempo thrills with “Day In, Day Out” backed by Mr. Stritch along with veteran drummer Eric Halvorson and two exceptional younger players, both representatives of the Juilliard/JALC jazz education system: saxophonist Daniel Cohen and bassist Caylen Bryant. The other (mostly) stand-up singer was an impressive relative newcomer, Robbie Lee, whom I’ve already heard around town but not yet in his own solo show, something I am looking forward to. Although only 27 — per his website, he looks younger — he already has a sound of his own, a left-of-center approach that lands him in the same spiritual camp as such worthies as Kurt Elling and the late Mark Murphy. Where the two female singers were both hot, Mr. Lee is decidedly cool. His first number, “Out of This World,” was simultaneously airborne and earth-bound, showcasing Mr. Cohen’s subdued sound no less than Mr. Lee’s. Next was “That Old Black Magic,” which was more aggressively uptempo, as down and down he went, round and round he went. Mr. Lee also flew in on a “Skylark,” accompanying himself on piano, with a keyboard technique that’s just as angular and outside of the box as his baritone.There were other delights in the tight, 80-minute set: Mr. Stritch combined the two back-to-back Mercer-Henry Mancini Oscar winners, “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses,” and replicated Bill Miller’s iconic intro from the classic Sinatra reading of “One For My Baby.” Ms. Stravelli and Mr. Cohen swung out lustily on “Come Rain or Come Shine” and showed her intimate side on “Single-O,” a lesser-known Mercer song of solitude in the same vein as “Travelin’ Light.” Ms. Blackhurst reveled in the theatrical aspects of the blues on “Blues in the Night.” The two ladies also joined forces on a pair of Mercer songs linked together by Mr. Stritch as a “revenge medley,” “Goody Goody” and “I Wanna Be Around.” I also came away with renewed appreciation for Mercer’s gift for conveying multiple layers of meaning: As Mr. Stritch showed, “I’m Old Fashioned” is actually, between Jerome Kern’s sophisticated harmonies and Mercer’s intricate lyric, anything but. Likewise, the text to “Too Marvelous For Words,” sung by Ms. Blackhurst and then reprised by the entire company at the conclusion, denigrates itself, claiming that words are inadequate even while at the same time subjecting us to a tsunami of synonomic verbiage. No wonder that Mercer ultimately brings us back to the “Skylark” — one of about a dozen of his ornithological arias — and advises us to borrow a love song from the birds.

A Particularly Stellar Lineup of Musicians Shares the Johnny Mercer Songbook at Jazz at Lincoln Center

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